Orcs Must Die! Unchained – FAQ/Walkthrough

Heroes

Tundra

Overview

My Personal Rating: 7/10

Tundra is a Hero that specializes in Frost damage. Although he is primarily melee, he has a couple of attacks that allow him to attack at range, and can create a wall of ice to redirect enemies for a few seconds. His most interesting ability is Avalanche, which can be used to damage minions, as well as quickly move short distances.

Abilities:

All of Tundra's abilities (including his Primary) apply the Frost debuff. Unlike Frost minions, Tundra's application of the Frost debuff is a bit faster, and minions should become Frozen after being hit either 2 or 3 times.

Icicle Burst (L2) - Tundra will shoot 3 icicles at whatever he is aiming at. When a minion is hit, a minor movement Slow is applied for a short duration.

• Mana cost: 25
• Cooldown: 3 seconds

Wall of Frost (Triangle) - Tundra places a wall of ice in front of him, which has about the length of two floor traps placed side-by-side. This can be used to either redirect minions (minions will be forced to move around it), or if there is no room to move, minions will attack it and potentially destroy it.

• Mana cost: 45
• Cooldown: 30 seconds
• Duration: 5 seconds

Flash Freeze (Square) - Tundra instantly freezes a group of minions in front of him (the target limit is about 5 or 6). The range of this is projected down a path in front of Tundra, which allows it to hit minions outside of melee range.

• Mana cost: 80
• Cooldown: 24 seconds

Avalanche (L3) - Tundra rolls himself into a large snowball, and the player is allowed to control him using regular movement controls (i.e. the left analog stick). In this state, Tundra can collide with minions (essentially running them over) to deal damage. This ability will cancel if Tundra runs into a wall or any object that halts his movement. You can also cancel this ability by pressing L3 again when it's in use.

• Mana cost (while ability is active): 5 per second
• Cooldown (after ability ends): 25 seconds
• Duration: 8 seconds

Passive: Permafrost - Tundra will deal extra damage to Frozen targets (100% more), and the duration of any Frozen effect is increased by 100%. Normally Frozen only lasts about 1-2 seconds, so this increases the duration to around 3 seconds.

Pros

Tundra has an interesting array of abilities, which allows him to be fairly flexible. He has access to natural crowd control (his Frost element); his melee is comparable to most other melee Heroes; he has access to a ranged attack that allows him to attack at a distance if it's desired.

Tundra is probably the most interesting in terms of his upgrades. Almost all of his abilities get upgrades, and get multiple upgrades as Tundra levels. So in other words, it's easy to "specialize" in one ability; you can specialize in Icicle Burst, reducing its Mana, giving it 1 more projectile, and then giving it some slight area-of-effect damage. You can also specialize into Avalanche as well, and the rest of his upgrades are focused more on his capability to freeze minions.

What this ultimately ends up doing, is that it allows you to pick a playstyle with him. Although specializing into an ability isn't unique to Tundra (Ivy and Bloodspike for example), it's unique for Tundra in the sense that each ability is fairly average when it starts - it's not great, but it's not bad.

So specializing into Icicle Burst allows you to play at range if you prefer that; if you prefer fighting in melee range, you may want to specialize in his Frozen effect; if you like to roll around with Avalanche, upgrades have you covered for that too.

What is actually the most interesting about this, is due to Tundra's abilities having an average performance (without upgrades), it also allows you to pick and choose, which means you can also mix upgrades up freely, depending on what you prefer. By taking 1 or 2 Icicle Burst upgrades, taking 1 or 2 Avalanche upgrades, and/or taking 1 or 2 Frozen debuff upgrades, you'll see that Tundra still performs fairly the same in comparison to specializing him into a single ability (which is not only very unique to Tundra, but it's surprising that he's that balanced).

In a sense, this means that Tundra probably has the single best selection of upgrades in the entire game (due to their balance). With most other Heroes, I would argue it's much easier to determine the good and bad upgrades; with Tundra, due to each upgrade not being stellar, but not being horrible, it allows you to freely utilize and experiment with every possible combination.

Cons

Tundra doesn't really have a lot of issues with his performance. However, the fact that he is so balanced (and his upgrades are equally as balanced), this also becomes his largest issue.

The balance comes at a cost, because in order to be that flexible in his performance, he has to sacrifice being great in one single ability. You can almost think of Tundra as a case of "a Jack-of-all-trades is a master of none", because not a single one of his abilities are really that amazing. If you compare him to say, Bloodspike, Bloodspike doesn't get the same amount of variety, but he can specialize into Stunning Execution. When all the Stunning Execution upgrades are taken, it becomes a fantastic ability; Tundra does not have access to any ability like that.

Tundra can be viewed as the poster child for the average performance - Each ability is not great, but it's not bad. Each upgrade is not great, but it's not bad either. Although this means that he doesn't really have any negative aspects to him that are that glaring, it also means there's really nothing amazing he does when he's played either. So you really have to pick a side about whether you like him or not.

There are only two things I don't really like about Tundra:

1. Wall of Frost is mostly useless - I'll admit I probably don't understand how to utilize this ability. Due to its short duration of 5 seconds, I don't really see the point in using it because all it really does is extend the minion's pathway for maybe a second or two. If it had no Mana cost, I may feel differently about it, but since it does, I don't think there's a point in using it.
   • It does become much more useful with its respective upgrade, but it still has problems even if you take it (read the Upgrades section for more info).
2. Avalanche is a little awkward to use - Although this is probably partially due to the ability's design (and it makes sense), it is very difficult to turn with Avalanche. It's ideally used in very long hallways, and it takes some practice to try to readjust and move around with it further than a straight line. As I said, that's probably intentional, but in reality, most level design on the maps do not reinforce the usage of Avalanche, because there are not a lot of these big, long hallways. Thus, this ability can become very under-utilized on certain maps.

Upgrades

Upgrades I use:

Note about my selection of upgrades - As I stated above, Tundra's upgrades are very flexible. So unlike some other Heroes I have written sections for, my selection of upgrades have little to do with performance (usually damage) optimization, but rather, my own personal preference in how I play Tundra.

• Brittle Ice (Level 2)
• Snowballing (Level 4)
• Deep Freeze or Crushing Flow (Level 7)
• Stay Frosty (Level 10)

Upgrades Analysis:

• Level 2:
  • Avalanche Potential: This is a great upgrade if you like to use Avalanche, and you should certainly choose it if you plan on using it a lot. Reducing the cooldown is always nice, but the awesome aspect of this is to remove the time limit; this allows you to perpetually roll around the level as long as you want, provided you have Mana, and that you don't run into a wall. This means, if done correctly, you can continually run minions over with Avalanche to deal damage.
  • Brittle Ice: I usually choose this upgrade because I personally don't like to rely on any ability, so I'd prefer to try to upgrade his Passive, which is always active. So remember that to get the increased damage from this upgrade, targets need to be Frozen. Frozen targets will only be frozen for a few seconds, so you don't really have a huge window to get that increased damage, but still, when you do, 25% is a decent boost.
  • Iced Over: If you plan on using Icicle Burst a lot, this is a great upgrade. Due to its short cooldown, Icicle Burst is very easy to go overboard in using, which saps your Mana quite a bit.
• Level 4:
  • Frosty Aura: This is arguably Tundra's worst upgrade, because it actually makes no sense in practice. If you're being attacked, what is happening? The minion attacking you has stopped his movement, and decided to hit you instead. So that means that you are applying a Slow to something that is stationary. It's not entirely useless, but about 90% useless, because it's really intended as a ranged defensive mechanic; you're staying at ranged, minion comes up and hits you, the Slow applied will buy you some time to run away. Still though, Tundra has no problems taking a hit, so this upgrade would really get extremely little use regardless.
  • Snowballing: Again, best used if you plan on using Avalanche a lot, but is still good even if it is used sparingly, because of the increased damage. The "speed and maneuverability" addition is quite odd for this upgrade, and I would argue it's more suited to be added to "Avalanche Potential". If you didn't take Avalanche Potential, you're going to be using Avalanche only in short bursts (or distances). Thus, having more speed an maneuverability is not that useful.
  • Chilled Weapons: Wall of Frost's only upgrade, and it's actually quite interesting, but unfortunately, it's not as good as I would like it to be. To decrypt what this upgrade does, we need to do some math: If your Primary is doing 100 damage, this means that each Primary hit will do an additional 40 damage (which is 40% of 100). This is actually really good in terms of damage, and since it can be used in co-op, this means that other Heroes can apply the Frost debuff as well (the upgrade adds frost damage), although this means nothing for Tundra, as he does it naturally. The one gigantic issue with this upgrade, is that it only lasts about 5 seconds, which means you're only going to get a few hits with that extra damage. It may also be important to note that the upgrade says "pass through" Wall of Frost, but in practice, it really just means you have to touch it in order to get the buff. If Wall of Frost lasted longer, or the buff lasted longer, this would be a great upgrade.
• Level 7:
  • Deep Freeze: A 25% increase to the duration of Frozen is not much; at best, it only adds a second. However, that doesn't necessarily make it worthless, especially if you took the "Brittle Ice" upgrade at level 2. With it, this allows even more opportunities to get that damage bonus.
  • Crushing Flow: If you took the "Avalanche Potential" at level 2, you have to be pretty mindful if you have to take this upgrade as well. For me, when I take Avalanche Potential, I have a tendency to keep using it until I run into a wall or something, which will cancel it. Therefore, this is not useful if you have a tendency to run into walls, because generally there will be no minions around, so no extra damage will occur when it gets cancelled. However, I would argue this is probably more useful if you didn't take Avalanche Potential, but if you did (and what this upgrade), just get into the habit of manually cancelling Avalanche by pressing L3, right when you get into the middle of a group of minions.
  • Icicle Assault: Not too bad of an upgrade, as it equates to a damage increase. If 3 Icicles is 100% damage, then 1 more icicle is a 33% damage increase, assuming that they all manage to hit the same target. Icicle Burst can be viewed as Tundra's ability for bosses/Mercenaries (since it hits the hardest in total) so even if you don't take the other upgrades for Icicle Burst, this still can be helpful for those minions.
• Level 10:
  • Freezer Burn: Probably the second worst ability of Tundra's set. It's really an upgrade that focuses on Tundra's freezing capability, so it combines well with "Brittle Ice" and "Deep Freeze" because Flash Freeze only freezes minions. It is a bit odd that it's attached to Icicle Burst (and the cooldown is only 3%) because this means it's also ideal if you took the Icicle Burst upgrades...but that's not possible to take the Icicle Burst upgrades with Brittle Ice and Deep Freeze. This makes it kind of a strange upgrade overall.
  • Shattering Icicles: It makes more sense to take this upgrade if you took the Icicle Burst upgrades, since it upgrades it even further. In my opinion, I don't like it because of two aspects - First, it's only a 50% chance. Second, it designates it as a "small radius" which I don't really like. If just one of these aspects weren't there (100% chance or a larger radius) I would probably prefer this upgrade.
  • Stay Frosty: I like this one the most, as it adds a damage component to Flash Freeze. The damage-over-time effect doesn't "tick" many times, as the condition is the targets need to be Frozen. So in practice, you may see this damage tick once, maybe twice at the very most, every time you use Flash Freeze. The damage is decent, but even then, extra damage with no effort (other than just using the ability) makes it fairly attractive. This really doesn't combine well with Icicle Burst though (as it will drain your Mana like crazy), so I would take Shattering Icicles instead if you specialized into Icicle Burst.

Synopsis

This is going to be a short Synopsis, because I pretty much covered everything there is to Tundra in the "Pros" and "Cons" sections.

I truly think Tundra is the improved version of Hogarth. The main draw towards Hogarth is that he uses Frost to crowd control, but unfortunately Hogarth doesn't get the same Passive as Tundra. Tundra's Passive really allows him to fully utilize the Frozen debuff, which really helps in terms of crowd control, as well as extra damage.

Tundra is a pretty good Hero to start out with, because he's really flexible in what he can do. As I said before, he really defines the "average" because he balanced so incredibly well; every ability (with the exception of maybe Wall of Frost) is not great, but it's not horrible either.

Tundra doesn't really work "the best" in any sort of manner; you get to choose how you decide to play him, which is really unique. Unlike just about every other Hero, Tundra doesn't really have an optimal build, because they're all viable; you simply need to know how to use his abilities correctly (particularly Avalanche) and then try to pick one that you enjoy the most.

From there, you can either try to specialize him further into whatever you enjoy, or you can try to balance him out by taking upgrades that improve all of his abilities. By experimenting with him, I think you'll find that Tundra performs well no matter how you play him, just as long as you know how he works.